At the end of last week I returned home from JAOO. It rules! Thanks to the great presentations, great panels, great organization, great social events, and overall great fun, it remains my favorite conference.
Mark among others would be happy to know that in the SOA track and panel on the first day of the conference, we all agreed that the term "SOA" was misleading, in the sense that it's not really an architecture, but at best a set of guidelines and good approaches. I suggested using the term "service-oriented approach" or even just "service orientation" instead. The panel also largely agreed that service orientation was all about the message.
Some of the audience disliked the fact that the panel couldn't come up with a strict definition for service orientation. Actually, this is a good thing. This is basically because there's no "one size fits all" solution. Phil Wainewright said it well: "In a loosely coupled service oriented architecture, you have a choice." I would state it more strongly: you need a choice.
The panelists also largely agreed with current negative sentiment toward the WS-* specification collection, perhaps stated best by Tim Bray. Despite the need for choice as described above, I consider myself among the ranks of the dubious when it comes to these specs. Knowing what I know about standards, for example, it will take many years to iron all these specs out so that they're comprehensive, complete, complementary, and practical, even if they're somehow fast-tracked. And if they're not properly standardized, with broad, fair, and even input from across the industry, then they're proprietary -- there's no gray area here. I agree in principle with Phil that you can choose what to use, but have fun telling that to the customer who has all these specs on their vendor selection checklist.
One of the best stories I heard over beer at JAOO was from Beat regarding some bug reports about a certain town in Austria being missing from some mapping software. ;-)
Anyway, everything about JAOO was great, except for the wet walk in the rain to get to the conference dinner. So mark your calendars: JAOO will be held September 25-30 next year. Trust me, you won't want to miss it. See you there.